A Better Way to Teach Online.

Here’s the one thing you’re not doing to make more money teaching online:

You don’t productize and package your service.

I’ll explain how I did it.

But if you’d prefer to hear an audio explanation, Pat Flynn did a podcast episode with Brian Casel that’ll give you the gist of how to productize your teaching business. Just replace their service business ideas with online teaching.

So, how can you do the same?

It starts with what you choose to teach.

I’ll describe this in the context of teaching English as a Second Language since it’s what I know, but you can apply this to any subject.

If you say you teach English and someone comes to you looking to learn English, there is a wide range of things you can teach them.

This is vague, open-ended, and stressful.

Sure, you can use lesson plans from Off2Class to figure out their level and crush general one-to-one lessons.

But you’re still stuck in the classroom with a ton of topics you could cover and no specific end goal in sight.

Narrow it down.

You might be thinking:

Jason, if I narrow down what I say I teach, I’ll lose students!

Forget the number of students you think you need to appeal to.

You’ll change the quality of students by narrowing down your topic to what I’m about to suggest because they are focused, determined, and their future depends on their results. Plus, you’ll build a solid reputation as an online teacher that helps students with this specific problem:

Test preparation.

Here’s why:

There are limits to what you’ll need to know and teach which limits preparation time.

There are tons of resources already made.

There is an end goal.

Don’t Be Afraid to Niche Down

When I started teaching online, I tried teaching everything under the sun.

But teaching focusing on IELTS preparation allowed me to set boundaries on the knowledge and skills I needed to know. I could then deliver better lessons because I only had to focus on the exam for my students.

Don’t get me wrong:

You still should point out mistakes in general English-language use.

But they hired you to prepare them for the exam, and this takes specific skills on its own.

They’ve got to:

Understand the format of the exam

Recognize the different question types, and

Deliver relevant answers.

Plus, you can now reframe what you offer:

You don’t teach English, you help your students get better educational or professional opportunities abroad.

You help them provide a better life for their family.

You help them reduce their anxiety and feel confident and in control taking the exam.

People buy based on emotion not reason.

Here’s how I did it.

Make Money Teaching Online with Online Courses as the Foundation

Think about it:

Packaging your services is like a small business version of what VIPKID does so well.

They offer a complete package to students including videos, text books, and an online platform for learning.

If you are a VIPKID teacher, your short one-to-one lessons are just one component of a larger package students pay for.

Those resoures do not need to get remade for each specific student.

Sure, they get updated.

But the textbooks, lessons, and videos remain largely the same over the course of the program.

You can make your own online course.

This is what I began doing…

…before I realized I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel.

You can white label a course to save yourself a ton of time.

White label means you pay to use someone else’s materials as your own.

I offered this full IELTS online learning course with 2 writing critiques and 3 30-minute speaking lessons since the speaking section for the exam runs about 14 minutes.

I had examples of high-scoring essays to use for grading through the white label course, so I didn’t have to spend time thinking about how to improve them. I simply compared the students’ essays to the prompts.

Using the speaking lesson examples from the course, my own training and knowledge of the exam, and common sense, I helped them improve their responses.

This means I earned $131 for an hour and a half of in-class time and grading 2 essays using examples I already had.

Remember that seven were paid on the same day up front, while the other three were paid after each speaking session.

If we switch back to ‘one-to-one talk’, I was making about $75 an hour.